Goya'S Dog Read online

  Praise for Goya’s Dog

  “Sarcastic, self-destructive, yet strangely endearing, Edward Dacres is the best kind of anti-hero—the kind you can’t forget. Who’d have thought a book about art and Toronto would be a page-turner? And yet it is, as we watch, riveted, to see if Dacres is going to fail or succeed. In crystalline prose, and with affectionate satire, Tarnopolsky deftly leads the reader forward, and twists this tale of a down-and-out British painter into a glorious celebration of life’s simpler beauties.”

  —Miguel Syjuco, author of Ilustrado

  “Because it’s always saying something about the here and now, historical fiction with a satirical edge can sometimes wickedly reveal how little things can change … Tarnopolsky makes much black humour of [protagonist] Dacres’s excruciating ways … Finely wrought.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “Clever, achingly funny, perfectly calibrated, in that terrain between the farcical and the poignant—I read it in a day.”

  —Joan Thomas, author of Reading by Lightning

  “Tarnopolsky displays great command over Dacres’s character, slowly revealing the tragedy that turned him into a misanthrope even while dramatizing the ways in which he alienates the people who cross paths with him … Goya’s Dog is a compelling story of an artist at war with himself.”

  —Quill & Quire

  “Tarnopolsky’s style is essentially witty: it combines observation and action in a way that is so elegant, so articulate and yet light of touch that one is hardly aware of its complexity. And he has made a book about a troubled person and a particularly turbulent place in history, a book about Canada as seen by an Englishman, a book about art and war and desire, that is both funny and sad.”

  —Russell Smith, author of Muriella Pent

  “Darkly hilarious … Damian Tarnopolsky’s meticulously weighted prose creates a vivid impression of his protagonist.”

  —Straight.com

  “I was most struck by the sustained excellence of [Tarnopolsky’s] prose. There is a deftness to his sense of pace and imagery that we associate with writers very much at home with their craft … As a historian I often dislike fiction set in the past, because the author’s sense of history is usually so bad. I didn’t have this feeling at all with [Tarnopolsky’s] deft recreation of Toronto, which seemed to me admirably minimalist … I don’t envy any younger writer, of either fiction or non-fiction, trying to make a way in this time of breakneck change, but I certainly do envy his talent.”

  —Michael Bliss, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto

  Praise for Lanzmann and Other Stories

  “In his debut story collection, Tarnopolsky often writes like a dazzling fallen angel. I listened to Tarnopolsky plucking at my shopworn critical synapses, and asked why he made them sing in a way several prize contenders haven’t. The answer is that he’s a truly new voice, delivered with a rare panache.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “[Tarnopolsky’s stories] not only display an ironic sensibility, but also demonstrate a prose style that owes much to the influence of Kafka … At turns surreal, serio-comic whimsical and erotic, Tarnopolsky’s stories hurtle headlong into the heart of our myths … and reveal that the truth waiting for us is not what we’d expect.”

  —Toronto Star

  “Tarnopolsky writes perfect, twisty sentences … there’s authority, Nabokovian play and bawdiness to these tales … And if this desperately earnest town needs one thing, it’s satire that takes itself seriously.”

  —eye weekly

  “Tarnopolsky loves his characters for their flaws, not despite them, and the reader too is compelled … The characters are finely fleshed out, the dialogue is fluid and believable, and the structures are clever and interesting … proof of Tarnopolsky’s skill, insight and wit.”

  —Quill & Quire

  “Smart and funny and crass and intelligent. There is sour humour in these stories and bitter discovery. Tarnopolsky is full of form and new feeling. Highly recommended.”

  —Michael Winter

  “Full of sex and music, cynicism and beauty, absurdity and perfect order, cities and conversation and diversity, Tarnopolsky’s elegant stories are darkly brilliant reflections of our darkly glittering age.”

  —Stephen Marche

  PENGUIN CANADA

  GOYA’S DOG

  DAMIAN TARNOPOLSKY studied literature at the University of Toronto and Oxford University and writing with Mavis Gallant at the Humber School for Writers. He is the author of Lanzmann and Other Stories, a widely praised collection of short fiction, and his work has been nominated for the ReLit Award, the CBC Literary Award, the Journey Prize, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Born in London, England, he lives in Toronto with his family. Goya’s Dog is his first novel.

  www.damiantarnopolsky.com

  ALSO BY DAMIAN TARNOPOLSKY

  Lanzmann and Other Stories

  DAMIAN TARNOPOLSKY

  PENGUIN CANADA

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745, Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in Hamish Hamilton hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2009

  Published in this edition, 2010

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

  Copyright © Damian Tarnopolsky, 2009

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Manufactured in Canada.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Tarnopolsky, Damian

  Goya’s dog / Damian Tarnopolsky.

  ISBN 978-0-14-317071-6

  I. Title.

  PS8639.A76G69 2010 C813’.6 C2010-902898-8

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at www.penguin.ca

  Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see www.penguin.ca/corporatesales or call 1800-810-3104, ext. 2477 or 2474

  FOR KATE

  CHAP
TER ONE

  Hell, thought Dacres, if Lady Dunfield didn’t shut up he was going to hurl himself through the window. There was a delay, as usual there was some delay, as there had been at every stage of the journey. Within moments, Dacres predicted, a nice little man—like all the nice little men in this blasted giant country—would come down the train with an explanation and an apology, and Lady Dunfield would show him her lipsticky teeth. His cheek hurt.

  The absurd thing was, he’d actually worried he’d be late. Thirty minutes before, with unusual anxiety, he’d hurried from his room, tiptapping his toes impatiently while waiting for the lift. Then rushed through the bright lobby and straight into a cab without looking left or right, and head down gone panting through the station carrying his two suitcases. As in a fairytale he’d argued with the guard until finally he was granted permission to board.

  Relief—but then in the first compartment he’d spied Gorren, the surrealist, sitting with the ballerinas, smirking and keen not to be disturbed. He clomped on past two other members of their little troupe, macs strewn about, playing cards out already, like men around a campfire. A green pencil sticking out from between Trebs’s teeth. He didn’t recognize two of the other fellows: probably Canadians. They all hated him, he knew. Dacres had continued down the corridor, fugitive and vagabond, his cases banging against the narrow walls, his cases twisting his wrists and banging against his knees. Approaching him were Nelda and her husband, Pear, the simpering fool who did those little oils exclusively of bridges and aqueducts with no water in sight. Pear gave Dacres an especially nasty glare. Awkward moment of not enough space, awkward triangular steps. And then, inevitably, he found that the only place to sit was with the Gorgon.

  He’d heard the final “All Aboard.” He’d looked forward and back, but she’d caught his eye. She was wearing her tiny hat with the insincere green trim. From outside came a whistle. Christ, he thought.

  “What a nice surprise,” said Lady Dunfield, closing her book. Tennyson? “Mr. Davis.” And then he was obliged.

  Warily, gingerly, stooping, Dacres had set one suitcase on the floor and then craned to place the other in the netting above. Falling into sitting, he’d cupped his sweaty forehead in his hand and swallowed nothing. He’d wondered where her hatbox was. Perhaps Violet had it, her assistant. Lady Dunfield had never wanted for anything, Dacres fancied: she had that unswerving certainty. She talked, her specialty. Dacres couldn’t believe his luck. The train had sat, vibrating, for ten minutes, and they went nowhere at all.

  “What the bloody hell’s going on?” Dacres said at last, his head pounding. “Why aren’t we bloody moving?”

  He sweated. Lady Dunfield ignored his outburst with a graceful smile. No doubt, thought Dacres, she puts it down to my artistic temperament. It was a pleasure to have the chance to share some reflections with him, she said. She was wiry and reptilian, tightly outfitted in a pastel blue dress.

  “For it is at times like this, isn’t it, Mr. Davis—isn’t it at times like this that the Arts become all the more important? When the world reaches for its munitions. It is at times like this that we—men like you; and me, perhaps, in my small way—need to remind the others what is truly good and noble in life. A different world entirely. Do you see?”

  He nodded. He pretended to search for the newspaper he’d taken from the hotel, folded it on his thigh and glanced down at it repeatedly. It was a provincial, parochial rag with five pages of society news.

  My mistake, he thought, trying not to listen to her talk about Culture, was the chambermaid, in Montreal. She’d given him the eye and he’d invited her in—but then came the awful screeching in that bizarre patois, the horrible accent. Then she’d brained him in the doorway with a table lamp. Men in dressing gowns running down the hall to look: everyone wanted to see Dacres naked in the corridor. He’d lost the respect of the legation then. No, he’d never had their respect in the first place, what a notion. They were all younger than he by a decade; only Lady Dunfield was his senior, by the same margin. They all thought that life lay before them and the only one he could bear was Gorren. With artists he always found himself expressing reactionary opinions; with the bourgeoisie it was the opposite. But drab empty Ottawa was back in his head now: a mistake. The letter that had brought him on this ridiculous tour in the first place, mistake. If only he’d thrown it in the fire. Yes, leaving London was the mistake. How could he work anywhere else? But then he imagined screaming planes and children running. Oh to be in London for the bombs. No, he thought, my mistake came a long time ago.

  Black words, visible, clumped slowly into sentences. His head hurt, his throat was hot and tight, the previous night he’d been up too late again. The newspaper, such as it was, was full of war and not-war: predictions of disaster and tight-lipped hope. Meanwhile, Lady Dunfield’s talk of Art and Duty drummed at his skull from within. She had a reedy voice, it never let you drift away entirely, when you started to it pulled you back.

  “Ridiculous person,” he said quietly.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Mr. Davis?” asked Lady Dunfield. “Are you well? Whatever happened to your face?”

  Gorren made me drink half a bottle of gin when I got Olympia’s surname wrong, he didn’t say.

  “Fine,” he said, not looking. “Fine. Splendid. Wonderful.”

  He’d told her his name a hundred thousand times but it hadn’t been allowed entry. She would say Davis and he would say Dacres and she would say yes, Davis. Her mind must have curdled. Halfway across the Atlantic, a few weeks previously, he’d surrendered. He’d decided to play along, he started answering to Davis when she called. He’d longed for it enough in the last few years, after all, to exist pseudonymously, to become someone else. Gorren called him Dacres, so did some of the other artists and performers, so did Nelda in her delicious voice, but with la Dunfield he was Davis. She told him she was very excited by the new direction he was charting away from the pastoral. Her secretary, Violet, a suspicious mousy type (where was she?), was trying to get to the bottom of it all.

  Their sister ship had been torpedoed, hundreds of casualties. Oh brave new world. So they’d gone north, north, hiding amongst the icebergs until the captain finally caught pluck and steered them down into the St. Lawrence. Then the trains: Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto. These absurd names.

  He flipped the paper and saw a sporting review, the baseball season. One of those Canadian things, a tomahawk, was lodged in Dacres’s forehead, and a line of sweat dropped down behind his ear. He pulled a fountain pen out of the pocket of his tweed jacket, which was too small for him around the shoulders. He needed to urinate. Trapped like a rat, he thought.

  “The mistake,” he wrote in the margin, and watched the black diffuse into the honeycomb. He added two dots.

  Glancing up at Lady Dunfield only encouraged her. Her lips formed a diamond.

  “Oh I’m no genius, Mr. Davis,” she said. “I’m no brooding soul.”

  Never throw this woman a bone, Dacres thought. He looked out of the window—elegant ladies of various ages waited. A man in khaki under a major’s hat. Two indistinct moppets. A predominantly grey covering on everything today—grisaille? He touched the glass. Their lips moved but he heard nothing. Suddenly the train lurched and halted, and Lady Dunfield tittered. They did not start moving forwards. There was ink on his fingertips. She chortled and inhaled.

  Dacres unclenched his teeth, resettled his weight.

  “But I do know this,” she was saying. “This one, little truth I can call my own. That if my efforts, my small efforts, in supporting the Arts, in this time of World Crisis, can do their part to deepen the understanding between our nations, then I will be satisfied, truly satisfied.” Her smile a dead butterfly.

  She thinks she can stop the war by herself, he thought. By showing pictures and staging readings. But then he recognized what she was saying and stared at her in blank surprise: had she had a stroke? It was her speech from the
previous night.

  With immense restraint he asked, “When will we set off, do you think?”

  Lady Dunfield wiped a false tear away with a lilac handkerchief.

  He wrote:

  Halifax Ottowa Montreal (!)

  and paused, and then he wrote:

  Broadhurst Gardens the neighbours

  Cattle provincials

  War declared.

  She looked delighted now, her eyes on his pen; she must think it was the moment of creation. She started telling him again. He opened and closed the paper and wrote beneath HANES’ FLOOR WAX:

  Not really my fault.

  Youthful efforts at Bohemianism (ha)

  Inability to get along as one should

  Stinking of failure Evelyn.

  Get off the train.

  The previous night hadn’t been a complete disaster. The idea of the tour was to promote Commonwealth understanding. Each city they stopped in would have an afternoon showing or two and an evening of music and poetry among the paintings. In Montreal it had been the Chamber of Commerce, in Ottawa the High Commission; Lady Dunfield had her connections. In Toronto there was a stop at the home of a wealthy man who no doubt had pretensions. Dacres had explored the house with pleasure. He passed grey urns sitting in spooned-out alcoves in the walls of the entrance hall. The floor tiles there were black and white and umber, Siena colours: on them the women’s heels skated, a sound like lobsters typing, and then there was the spiral staircase, wrought-iron balustrade, good for looking at ladies’ legs. The estate lay in the outskirts of the city and it was not on too grand a scale; the one oddity was that it was full of odd small rivets and trinkets, a brass tap on display on the mantelpiece. There was a dining room, a smoking room, a billiards table.

  Dacres stood in the little library staring out at the crisp lawn and the square, tended bushes, and the heavy orange air between the sun and his eyes. He was thinking that this wasn’t the frozen wasteland he’d been told about; here was a pocket, look. He felt an unaccustomed calm, he felt as calm as the sun hanging motionless in the sky, calm as the sun growing more and more dense with colour. He was avoiding the preparations, avoiding the start of the reception. He stood, fingers pressing tight against the rim of a tumbler of Scotch, the ice melting. It was September, war had been declared, and here he was. Hard to understand. A moment of silence, Dacres looking out at green and yellow, nothing in his head.